


(Gonna Be) Your Man in Motion

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Ending, First Kiss, Fix-It, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Team as Family, h50 episode 10.22
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:34:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23823142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: Steve watches the back of Danny’s head for a moment. From this distance, his hair could be as blond and full as it was ten years ago when they first met. Steve looks at the ocean – also the same – and one of the trees – a little bigger, probably – and by then he needs to get going if he doesn’t want to miss his flight.Somehow, he drifts back to the beach anyway.Or: Steve finds he’s not very good at leaving a certain someone behind.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 61
Kudos: 392





	(Gonna Be) Your Man in Motion

**Author's Note:**

> Life, as everyone experiencing it will probably have noticed, has recently been very odd and a lot more tiring than usual. At the same time, I think I’ve hit one of those phases in the cycle of my existence as a writer where most of the words I put down sound tired (like they’ve already spent a few weeks living in the midst of a pandemic, perhaps) and whatever the opposite of something that flows well is (vastgeroest, onbeweeglijk, niet los te wrikken, idek, what is English), and the combination of those factors means that I have still been writing, but a lot less than I usually would. But this got finished! There’s always hope. Let’s make that the moral of this story. [cue inspirational outro song as the credits roll 🌈✨]
> 
> This is AU in the sense that it rewrites the last six-ish minutes of 10.22, starting from the point where Steve walks away from Danny after their goodbyes on the beach. The title is from _St. Elmo’s Fire_ , a song by John Parr.

“Don’t make me come looking for you,” Danny threatens half-heartedly, and Steve has never had a decent reply to that, so he walks away. He tries, at least, and he gets as far as the lawn before something stops him, he looks back one last time, and he finds Danny still in that Adirondack chair on the beach, now craning his neck. The moment Steve turns, Danny does too, like he’s trying to pretend he was never interested.

Steve watches the back of Danny’s head for a moment. From this distance, his hair could be as blond and full as it was ten years ago when they first met. Steve looks at the ocean – also the same – and one of the trees – a little bigger, probably – and by then he needs to get going if he doesn’t want to miss his flight. 

Somehow, he drifts back to the beach anyway. “Hey.”

Danny looks up and it’s weird. There’s a flash of something on his face before it’s gone, just as quickly, and Steve has nothing but his gut and ego to tell him it was probably hope. “You back already?” Danny asks, in that familiar combative way of his. “Do you even know how this whole leaving your best friend behind thing works?”

“No. I don’t.” He’s not sure that wasn’t a little too honest. He’s not sure it was honest enough, either. He sinks back down in the empty chair he left two minutes ago so he could get Danny to hug him goodbye, because for the past few weeks his gut’s been telling him that something is wrong and now it’s whispering that leaving Danny here like this, all on his own, is even worse. He’s growing more and more sure of that much, at least. “This is a lot harder than I thought it would be.”

Danny watches him for a moment with something that’s a strange cross between frustration and sympathy. “Look, if you really feel you need to go, you need to stop listening to my bitching about it. I’ll be fine.”

“I know you will be. And I’ll be back.” Danny’s right; of course he’s right.

“Of course,” Danny echoes, like he heard that. “I’ll come get you if you don’t visit every few months. You know I’m good for it. I’ve done it in the past.”

“Every few months,” Steve says, doing some of his own echoing.

“Yeah.” Danny frowns. “Or whatever your plan is.”

Danny not respecting his boundaries was the least of his concerns. It’s the way that sounds – months. Those are the terms he’d have been thinking in, too, except- Except he hasn’t really let himself think it. The prospect of staying here, with this latest Doris mystery hanging over his head and all the guilt he’s piled up over the years, had grown so suffocating that he figured he had to leave. He likes simple solutions to complicated problems. If a door sticks, you kick it down. 

Obviously, his life here is not one single door. Maybe a few rusty hinges don’t justify throwing out the whole thing.

“You’re gonna miss your plane, Steve,” Danny says, which is again exactly what Steve was thinking a moment ago. This time it’s not even impressive, because this is a pretty damn unavoidable observation, but it fills him with a wash of affection anyway.

“Maybe that’s for the best.”

Danny watches him with suspicion. “What are you saying?”

It would be very nice if Steve had any kind of clue about the answer. “I don’t wanna kick you,” is what he settles on, because that’s one thing he knows for sure.

“Good,” Danny says, even though he sounds confused. “I don’t like being kicked, and I’m an injured man right now.” 

There’s a silence because Steve doesn’t reply right away. He watches the ocean and he’s fairly sure Danny watches him. 

He pretty much gets a confirmation when Danny demands, agitation sounding through, “Seriously though, what are you _talking_ about?”

He looks at Danny and there’s that thing, that well-known pull in his chest, like a rubber band that always wants to snap him right back to Danny’s side. It’s probably what made him stop before he got more than fifty feet away in the first place. “I’m coming in,” he announces, as a courtesy, because he’s already up out of his chair and awkwardly hunching over Danny’s.

“Wow, you are,” Danny says, very close to Steve’s ear. He answers the strange hug, patting Steve’s back for a moment, but then he starts pushing at Steve’s shoulders instead. “Hey, this is bad. Let me get up.”

The words reassure Steve Danny isn’t actually trying to push him away, but rather offering a smarter way to approach this. This is why he needs Danny close – they’re a team, and they work best when they can catch each other’s mistakes. He takes a step back and grabs Danny’s lower arms to help him up, and then Danny is shaking him off so they can wrap around each other again. Steve folds over Danny, gathering him up, wondering why he ever let go in the first place.

“You’re very affectionate today. Is this what happens when you try to say goodbye?”

It hits Steve all over again that the only reason Danny needs to ask that is that they’ve never done it before. Ten years, and they’ve only ever spent more than a week physically apart in the worst of crisis situations. Neither of them knows how to do this and Steve is rapidly growing to be more and more certain that he doesn’t want to be the one forcing them to learn. “I don’t think I’m saying goodbye.”

“Yeah, because you’re coming back,” Danny says, like he’s rolling his eyes at the same time. His voice rumbles through both their bodies. “I know the drill.”

Steve takes a deep breath. Danny smells like Danny, and that’s obvious but also oddly comforting. Another thing that hasn’t changed; that doesn’t have to change if Steve isn’t an idiot. “No, because I’m not leaving.”

Danny breaks away and it’s a little distressing, but he doesn’t go far. He creates just enough distance between them without letting go of any part of Steve that they can still look each other in the eye. He searches Steve’s face the way you’d look for car keys if you’re late for your first day at a new job that you need to keep if you want to make rent this month – kind of panicked, with an edge of desperation. “Are you shitting me?”

Steve isn’t, and he knows that, but Danny doesn’t seem to know it, so he’s going to need something drastic to show how serious he is. He kisses Danny.

Later, he’ll never be entirely sure if those two were actually related. Maybe he just really wanted to kiss Danny. It sounds very plausible. 

For a moment, Danny almost kisses him back. Then his hands start pushing _again_ and they’re at arm’s distance again and Steve has never been more glad that Danny is a smaller guy than he is, because those inches difference in arm length really feel like they make a difference today.

“What the hell is wrong with your sense of timing?” Danny demands, more wide-eyed than frowning at all. He throws his hands up in the air, tragically meaning he lets go of Steve. It looks like he would be pacing if he weren’t still dealing with injuries that make getting around more trouble than it’s worth. “One of my last words was _shitting_ , Steve, how does that put _anyone_ in a romantic mood?”

He just kissed Danny and Danny is still ranting at him about semantics. Steve is a little delighted and a lot relieved and mostly smart enough not to want to show any of it too overtly, but probably not good enough of an actor to really hide it. “Sorry,” he tries, fighting to keep the smile off his face.

“No,” Danny barks. He jabs Steve in the ribs, hard enough to be felt, but not mean enough to hurt. “Don’t be sorry. You don’t get to be sorry. You-” He grabs Steve’s shoulders again and Steve, for one of the very first times in his life, not only tolerates but enjoys being manhandled. “Come here, you gotta-”

Steve goes. It’s only a step, but it’s worth it, because then he’s swaying into Danny’s most personal space, that rubber band apparently ever tightening. “Gotta what?”

Danny squeezes his shoulders too hard. “Gotta stop asking stupid questions.”

“Gotta kiss you.”

“Yeah,” Danny breathes, and Steve could swear he feels the puff of air. “You got it.”

“Gotcha,” Steve agrees, digging his fingers in Danny’s hip, and Danny, instead of coming up with another stupid variation on this linguistic theme they’ve accidentally set, lets himself be kissed. Not for very long, but the only change he introduces after that first moment passes is that he stops _letting_ Steve and instead starts bickering with him wordlessly about who should be following who in this newest joint endeavor they’ve embarked upon, and Steve ends up laughing into Danny’s mouth in a way that makes standing his ground surprisingly difficult. 

Someone clears their throat very pointedly. It takes Steve a while that is long enough for another throat clearing to realize it wasn’t Danny, and then another moment until it clicks that there is, in fact, still a world outside of Danny, whether Steve chooses to venture out into it or not. 

This world has Lou Grover in it, standing a little distance away on the border of the grass and the sand with his hands in his pockets, watching them in baffled amusement. “Sorry to interrupt.” He raises his eyebrows, like he’s daring them to contradict. “I was uh, just coming to see if you were hiding out here. The entire team’s inside, waiting for you.”

Steve’s brain isn’t working at top capacity yet. “They are?”

Lou doesn’t bother repeating himself. Instead, he nods once in their direction, quietly encompassing the entire scene. “Have to tell you, that’s not how I said goodbye to my best friend when I left Chicago.”

Steve realizes he’s still holding Danny and lets go, trying his hardest to remember what he used to do with his hands before putting them on Danny started to seem like the only sensible option. He has to think back a lot more years than expected. “I’m not leaving.” He briefly tucks his hands behind his back, but in the end settles them on his belt. He’s not standing at attention here. He didn’t do anything wrong, even if he feels like a schoolboy who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“Ah.” Lou grins, rocks back on his heels and pretends to think it over. “Well, then maybe this is a little more like me and Renee, huh?”

That’s when Danny is shaken back into movement. “Don’t do this to us.” He waves one open palm, maybe as a distraction, because at the same time he takes a step closer to Steve again and puts his other hand on Steve’s back. It’s pretty smooth and believably excusable as Danny needing someone to lean on because of his injuries, but it makes Steve feel a little better about how much his own fingertips itch to make contact. “We just had our first kiss. You can’t pressure us into defining our relationship in terms of whether it’s like a marriage.”

Steve turns to Danny, watching him in profile from less than a foot away. “Why not? He already knows the answer.”

“Thanks to you half the island already knows the answer, Steve, but it’s the principle of the thing.”

“I think half is underselling yourself a bit,” Lou says, cheerfully enough that it doesn’t even sound like they’re being roasted. “I’m heading back inside. You two take a moment to compose yourselves and then come say hi at least, okay?”

“Excuse you,” Danny says, but Lou has already turned and is leaving, so Danny raises his voice to yell after him, “What does that mean, compose ourselves?” He tuts, looks at Steve as if for support, freezes, and then makes a low, considering noise. “Alright, so maybe you kind of look like someone kissed the living daylights out of you.”

“You’re one to talk,” Steve tells him, because now that he’s looking, yeah, Danny’s lips are red, his face is unusually flushed, and the left side of his mohawk is in more disarray than the number of nautical miles per hour that today’s wind is blowing can justify. Both best and worst of all, there’s a certain undefinable soft quality to his eyes that makes Steve feel a little short of breath. “What, what’s that look?”

Danny shrugs, half grins, moves to get to his cane. “I can’t just be happy?”

Steve grabs the stick before Danny reaches it and hands it over. Their fingers brush and Steve flashes back to when he held Danny’s hand in the hospital, and Danny finally woke up and immediately laid into him for not expressing enough open joy about it. “You’ve been happy a lot recently.” 

“There’s a lot to be happy about. I’m still alive and you’re still here, for example.”

Steve looks in the direction of the house. Lou is long gone. “And our friends are laughing at us.”

Danny pulls a face, acknowledging the point. “Speaking off, let me-” He tugs Steve closer, pushes the cane at him for temporary safekeeping and starts, for lack of a better word, grooming Steve. He tugs at Steve’s shirt, startling him, runs a guiding hand through Steve’s hair, startling him a lot less, and works the buttons of Steve’s shirt, which falls in the category of things Steve didn’t see coming again. He understands why Danny does it when he looks down and finds more of his own chest hair on display than is entirely fitting for polite company. “Got a little carried away there,” Danny says, with zero traces of remorse.

In return, Steve helps him smooth over his hair, but there is very little to be done about the rest of it. They’re forced to head inside still looking very recently kissed and suspiciously close to smiling at the drop of a hat.

The moment Steve sets foot through the lanai doors, following Danny in, he’s greeted by a chorus of cheers and a loud pop, and then he gets to watch champagne foam bubble over the neck of a bottle and over Tani’s hand and onto the floor, making everyone take a step back to avoid getting splattered, turning the cheers into equally raucous laughter. Steve joins in, because while he isn’t particularly enthused about watching a floor he cleans gain a small puddle of alcohol, the mood is as fizzy as the drink.

Junior is coming up behind Tani with a tray balancing all six of Steve’s champagne flutes and three wine glasses to make up for the gap between what’s available and how much they actually need, present company taken into account. “Congratulations on finally seeing sense,” Tani says, when she pushes a flute of bubbly at Steve in much the same way Danny pushed the cane at him. Steve is not sure if she means that he’s decided to stay or she’s getting at the very recent progression in his relationship with Danny, but he finds he also really doesn’t want to ask and give her a chance to explain.

Instead, he eyes his drink. “Where did you get champagne at a minute’s notice?”

“Danny’s been keeping it in the little fridge in the garage,” Junior says. He waits until Tani has hit the last of the glasses with what’s left of the bottle and then helps her hand out the drinks. When Lou said the entire team was waiting he wasn’t kidding – it’s not just Lou, Junior and Tani, but also Quinn, Adam, Noelani and even Lincoln, who to his credit appears only slightly taken aback at showing up to a fellow SEAL’s goodbye party and then celebrating the very opposite of that instead. Eddie is lounging on the couch, watching the commotion with mild interest.

“It was supposed to be for when I can get rid of these damn crutches,” Danny grouches. He hasn’t lost any of his natural talent for the art of grumpiness just by being a self-proclaimed mostly happy person now. “You guys owe me fifty bucks.”

Tani has one of the wine glasses in one hand and the probably very sticky and still empty bottle in the other, and it’s that one that she uses to gesture at Steve. “The boss can pay. He’s got the money now that he’s not doing his great escape.”

Steve purses his lips and very deliberately waits until Danny is sticking his nose in his glass to sniff the alcohol before replying. “Now that I’m staying, I was actually thinking of maybe investing in a little boat.”

Danny breathes out hard in shock and derision, blowing champagne up his own nose. “I’m sorry, a wh-” He interrupts himself with a cough, snorts unattractively, runs the back of his hand under his nose and aims a death glare at Steve, and Steve can’t do a thing but beam at him. He gets a preview of just how bad he has it when he realizes he still really, really wants to kiss Danny. 

“I’m sorry, what was that?” he asks, as innocently as possible. “I didn’t quite catch that.”

Danny is predictably outraged, but his reply is wisely cut off by Tani. “Let’s have a toast!” she exclaims. 

“Before anyone has a chance to kill anyone,” Quinn adds, which makes Noelani grin and Lincoln stand up a little straighter.

Adam raises his glass. “To Steve?”

“And Danny,” Lou adds, fully grinning once again.

“Sure, that works,” Tani decides, so in the next moment seven people are unsteadily chorusing, “To Steve and Danny!”

Steve doesn’t join in because toasting in your own honor feels a little tacky, so his attention naturally ends up drifting to Danny instead, only to find him already watching. Steve feels the pull of the elastic again, and he feels at home and happy and right, not just in his heart but also deep in his gut, and if he had any lingering apprehensions about his decision to stay instead of take off, that would have settled it. Here, standing before him, is the one thing in his life he’s sure of beyond the shadow of a doubt.

He’ll drink to that.

(And they can figure out the boat thing later. They did, after all, just discover an interesting new way to carry out an argument.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments are pretty cool, you are _very_ cool, global pandemics are decidedly uncool, and I hope you’re all still doing something that resembles okay. ❤
> 
> I’m on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com), or with my exclusively H50 (and mostly McDanno) sideblog as [five-wow](https://five-wow.tumblr.com).


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